The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

SERVANTS OF PEACE 367
may come to know and believe in the power of enlightenment,
and come to recognize the nature of your mind, for to
recognize the nature of your mind is to engender in the
ground of your being an understanding that will change your
entire world view, and help you discover and develop, naturally
and spontaneously, a compassionate desire to serve all
beings, as well as a direct knowledge of how best you can do
so, with whatever skill or ability you have, in whatever circumstances
you find yourself. I pray then that you will come
to know in the very core of your being the living truth of
these words by Nyoshul Khenpo:
An effortless compassion can arise for all beings who have not
realized their true nature. So limitless is it that if tears could
express it, you would cry without end. Not only compassion, but
tremendous skillful means can be born when you realize the nature
of mind. Also you are naturally liberated from all suffering and
fear, such as the fear of birth, death, and the intermediate state.
Then if you were to speak of the joy and bliss that arise from this
realization, it is said by the buddhas that if you were to gather all
the glory, enjoyment, pleasure, and happiness of the world and put
it all together, it would not approach one tiny fraction of the bliss
that you experience upon realizing the nature of mind.
To serve the world out of this dynamic union of wisdom
and compassion would be to participate most effectively in
the preservation of the planet. Masters of all the religious traditions
on earth now understand that spiritual training is essential
not solely for monks and nuns, but for all people,
whatever their faith or way of life. What I have tried to show
in this book is the intensely practical, active, and effective
nature of spiritual development. As a famous Tibetan teaching
says: "When the world is filled with evil, all mishaps should
be transformed into the path of enlightenment." The danger
we are all in together makes it essential now that we no
longer think of spiritual development as a luxury, but as a
necessity for survival.
Let us dare to imagine now what it would be like to live in
a world where a significant number of people took the opportunity
offered by the teachings, to devote part of their lives to
serious spiritual practice, to recognize the nature of their mind,
and so to use the opportunity of their deaths to move closer
to buddhahood, and to be reborn with one aim, that of serving
and benefiting others.